by Dale Mayer
"That I can do." Ronin called for an ambulance. "Can anyone else help her?"
Yes. I'm calling them. You calm the animals while I help Tabitha. Stefan, in a somber voice, added, this time, I don't know if I can save her.
***
"How bad is she?"
Fez pulled on his gaping neckline and tried to school his face to project a confident smile. His boss narrowed his gaze on him.
Rushing into speech, Fez said, "She's had a rough trip, no doubt about it. But I'm sure she'll pull out of it." Like hell. He prayed she didn't do anything major like try to escape or die on his watch. Counting on Roberts to handle this stuff before had been way easier. He didn't like being responsible. Especially when it wasn't his job.
"Is she eating and drinking?" His voice, so cold and clipped, cut off Fez's hopes instantly.
"Not when I left. If Roberts would show up, he could fix her." The boss's gaze turned flat, dead looking. Ah shit.
"Roberts won't be back. You'll have to handle it."
No. No. Where was his partner? What the hell had happened here? And Fez didn't know how to do Roberts’s job. Shit. Shit. This was not good. Could Roberts have booked it like he'd suggested he might? Or had the boss ‘taken care’ of him.
Shit. He shouldn't have mentioned his missing partner. But now he was starting to worry about his own skin. Especially if he was expected to look after the cargo without Roberts. He didn’t show his concerns – instead smiled brightly. "I'm sure she is drinking and eating now."
"I'm not. Go back and watch over her." That gaze became lethal. "Or else..."
Oh crap. "I came to get my pay—" Fez, perspiring heavily, wiped his brow with his sleeve.
"You'll get paid when I get paid and that will be when she's delivered safe and sound," the boss said flatly. "If anything stops me from getting my money, you can be damn sure you won't be getting yours either."
And that nervous feeling since Roberts went missing deepened to much more. Somehow this gig had gone south and this job was bad news. And he wanted no part of it. Well, no further part in it.
He hadn't gotten this far in life by being stupid. He knew when to listen to that gut instinct. Too bad his instincts hadn't kicked in earlier. He could have left with Roberts.
His partner must have some money stashed to have pulled off his disappearing act. Fez wished he'd asked more questions because Fez was broke. He needed this payday.
And pushing for money right now just might be the stupidest thing he'd ever done.
Better he did as he was told and keep this female alive. At least long enough for the sale to go through.
Then the boss could eat his dust.
Chapter 8
Sunday, wee hours of the morning
Hunger. Fear. Panic.
Emotions rolled through Tabitha as she was buffeted from side to side by her experience. She beat back at the pain and struggled to retain consciousness.
It was all too impossible.
But at least she was still alive.
Or was she?
Could she have died?
And was this....death?
No. At least not any form she'd understood death could take.
Another sound of rage rippled through her. She shuddered but the agony was at a visceral level. She couldn't escape. This agony had become hers. Not her attacker's.
Something was happening to her.
To her body. To her soul. To something that was an inherent part of her.
She couldn't move away from either the attacker's or her emotions, but she didn't feel a physical pain. It was there, but in the distance as if it was a cloud away. A cloud? Listen to her. She was talking as if she were dead. And that so couldn't be.
Why couldn't it be? her conscious mocked. What's so special about you that death wouldn't find you? He found your grandfather and so many of your friends.
I'm not ready, she whispered. Too damn bad. And something tugged at her. That same grabbing sensation. As if someone needed her. Or wanted something from her.
She tried to identify it, but blacked out before she could identify it.
***
The smell hit Tabitha first when she stirred back to consciousness. Rank, old and stale. Cigar smoke. Animal odors. Feces. Of many kinds. Fear. The dominant smell was...blood.
Instinctively, Tabitha wrinkled up her nose.
Memories flooded her. She'd been attacked again. Hadn't she?
She'd only surfaced a few minutes ago. But surfaced to what? Where was she? And if she could move her nose, was she here physically? She desperately wanted to stretch. Her body felt cramped, imprisoned in some way. It was a horrific feeling, but she didn't know if the sensations were physical sensations or psychic ones.
How was she to tell?
The stench was horrific – and that was physical. But her house didn't stink and that meant she wasn't at home. Her hopes fell. And if she wasn't at home, then where the hell was she?
She tried to assess her surroundings but she couldn't open her eyes. She felt heavy. As if her body was too big to move. As if whatever had happened to her was so bad she shouldn't look.
Beneath the sensations ran a thin river of anger. A molten lava river ready to burst into flame at the right moment. Her tense muscles sang in readiness.
Tension? Muscles? What the hell was going on? The last thing she remembered was being ripped from her body while Ronin was at her side. Ronin? Where was he? Had that been a bad dream? Or was this the bad dream? She knew it was impossible to sort through realities if she didn't ground herself in one of them. She’d tried to ground herself in her house.
But she either hadn't been – or had her ground had moved.
And that terrified her. She hadn't realized that was a possibility.
In the distance, she heard sounds of a door opening. Her muscles came to life. Waiting...
Maybe she was at home? No. She couldn't be. She had to remember that. And if she wasn't at home, she wasn't in her own body, and therefore the muscles she could move as if her own – weren't hers.
Talk about a mind bender.
She had to consider that this was a possession – one where she had somehow possessed someone else. How could she have been forced to do that against her will?
She'd never heard of it happening to anyone else without their effort. Of course not. That would be too easy.
And that idea of possession was obviously not the whole answer because in order for her to possess someone else, they'd have to be here too.
They'd have to be sharing the same body.
And that just creeped her out. How could anyone drag a soul out of its body and into their own? And even if they could – why would they? That just didn't make any sense.
Especially when she didn't want this.
She'd never considered possession in the sense of wanting to possess another soul. She'd heard Stefan talk about other cases where possession had happened. Where someone else stepped in and took over a person's body…regardless of the original owner.
Is what she was going through the same sensation of what a person trying to possess another felt like? Did they want to feel strong young muscles tightening beneath them instead of their current existence?
Or was this something else again? Damn, but she wished she could see. Something. Anything. But her eyelids wouldn't open. Why? Then it hit her. Because they weren't her eyelids?
Yet.
A door slammed shut. She heard a muffled sound that was oddly close. Her body shifted, tightened. Apprehension rippled through her. Nausea climbed her throat. But was it hers or her host's?
Separating host from visitor would be impossible if she couldn't detach. Tabitha tried to shut out the many conflicting sensations and just listen. And footsteps were striding across a hard floor toward her. Steel-toed boots on concrete maybe? At least a work boot. Heavy. So it was likely a male approaching, one with a slightly uneven gait. So she definitely wasn't at home. She could think of many other
places that she'd been in this last year that might sound like this.
She could sense her body – or the body she was in – tightening, as anger and panic built. The footsteps strode closer still. Her body quivered. Then a sharp clatter sounded. She jumped back. It was close. So damn close. And it wouldn't quit. As if this person walked with a pipe dragging along the side of a cage and made sure to bang on every pipe in the metal cage. Clack. Clack. Clack.
Cage? Hell. Was this person, now her, a prisoner?
And the footsteps would then belong to her captor. Asshole.
She shuddered and felt an answering ripple from all around her. So weird. Yet in a strange way, almost comforting. She and her host were connected. Their emotions and reactions connected. It was hard to be disturbed by this as she could sense the other person's reaction to her every emotion.
It meant she was not alone in this body. Only there was also some sort of disconnect between them.
The sounds grew and grew and changed tone as if someone raked a pipe along several different cages. Her stomach cramped with every step taken. If he was trying to psyche her out, he was succeeding.
She wanted to hide. To back into the furthest corner where he couldn't find her. But somehow she thought she might already be as far back as she could go. It was hard to tell.
She could sense the panic rising inside. Not her panic. Yet it was her panic. She was terrified. Only she didn't know of what. And that made it worse.
"There you are. How are you doing now, my beauty?"
Tabitha frowned. Was he talking about her? Damn. She wished she could see. Was she blind? That would certainly add to the horror.
"Still won't eat or drink, huh? Well, we can't have that. You're worth far too much money for me to have you be stubborn to the point of hurting yourself."
She wanted to hide away from the silky insidious evilness in his voice. She wanted to. But nothing she did made the muscles react. Not to her commands. Or to her fears. She really was living inside someone else's body.
His words finally penetrated her beleaguered mind. Just what did money have to with this?
Then the possibilities pummelled her brain. White slave trader. Sex trader. Kidnapping. Extortion. Blackmail.
Her mind spun with the horrible possibilities. This poor person. The emotions ripped through her in waves of pain and loss and revulsion.
"So are you going to have a better day today?" The voice that spoke was really close. A horrible voice. And that was when she realized there was a solid dark blanket or some kind of covering over her prison.
"Yah need to. We have some more traveling to do. Just a short trip from here. And you need to be in good shape when we arrive." There was a metal click. "Then you're his problem."
The voice got closer, encroaching on her space, pushing against her boundaries. She backed up to the corner of her cage. The cover over her prison was pulled to one side and she heard a small pop. She fell back and there was a stinging sensation in her shoulder.
She bounded to her feet, opened her mouth to scream...but...instead...out of her mouth came a horrific...roar.
***
Stefan couldn't explain the compulsion to come to Tabitha's house. Tabitha herself was in the hospital in critical care. Dr. Marsden, who'd seen so much, had been shocked at her condition, telling Stefan over the phone, "I have no idea what is keeping her alive."
And that's why he was here.
To find answers.
Stefan, Tabitha’s friend and mentor, exited his car and climbed the stairs to Tabitha's front door. She'd invested no money in outward appearances and had put everything into the animals and their protection. She'd had a decent security system, but Roman was boosting it for her. Then yesterday Stefan had beefed it up yet again. Apparently that hadn't been enough either. The contents of her house were precious in more ways than one. The energies of its inhabitants were special.
He closed his eyes and waited for the energy of the house to calm. It automatically picked up the pace of its movements with the arrival of any stranger – person, animal, or thing. As Stefan stood there, the energy would eventually recognize him and his attachment to the house's energy.
He let his energy soften, soothe and expand. Using an adaptation of a technique he'd learned from Shay, he thinned one layer of his aura to spread like a blanket of comfort over the interior energy of the house. Within seconds, the house energy calmed and the two energies did a dance of recognition before assimilating into one.
He smiled as the door in front of him opened on its own.
He stepped through to the front hall.
Tripod waited a good ten feet in, his long tail sweeping a wide arc on the floor, a full throated whine wailing from his throat. Hearing Tango in the background, his voice just starting to pick up full strength, Stefan sent out a wave of comforting soothing energy to the tiger. And a greeting. He'd met the big cat many times on an energy level. It was inevitable when he spoke with Tabitha telepathically. Tango's energy was all over her. This would be the first time he met the huge cat on a physical plane.
Stefan walked forward and bent over to give the big guard dog a scratch behind his ears. Waves of grief and anger poured from the big animal. "Sorry, Tripod. I'm here to help. We're doing everything we can. You keep her in your thoughts and I will too. Together we'll keep her grounded so she can find her way home." At least he hoped.
The dog whimpered. Stefan understood. He could sense the dog's distress. And the dog's confusion. "You probably haven't been fed either, have you?"
He checked out the dog's energy. There was a thread of hunger but it was suppressed under the distress. Even if he set food out for the animal, chances were good the dog wouldn't eat.
He walked into the kitchen and found dry kibble. He poured several cups into the dog dish. Tripod could eat when he wanted to. If he wanted to.
Sue, from the center, could also deal with that problem. She had pitched in last time Tabitha had been incapable.
Sending out a second wave of soothing energy to Tango, Stefan strode calmly to the back enclosure. It spread from floor to ceiling at the back of the house and was connected to a larger outside enclosure to give the tiger more roaming space. Stefan stood and waited.
Tango's roar reached him before he saw the elderly white tiger. Did Tabitha even know how old this guy was?
Tabitha was in her late twenties and this guy had been in her life since she was little. Tango's father, Tobias, had been with her grandfather for decades before her. And Tobias's mother before that – probably given another name starting with T as well. Stefan remembered Tabitha mentioning something about it being a convention her grandfather had used after his wife, Tansy had passed away.
She'd been the impetus for this house and enclosure having been as crazy about tigers as her husband. Stefan also understood Tango had been here all his life. He was also born with a minor defect in his leg – if Stefan remembered correctly.
The massive animal sauntered toward Stefan. The cage wall was the only thing between them. He knew Tabitha spent most of the time with Tango. In fact, her bedroom had some kind of doorway as well. The large cat had never known freedom in the sense of being wild.
And times had changed. There were large reserves around the world that were dedicated to taking care of animals like Tango. Exotic Landscape covered acres of land – and yet it was never enough. The property value of a piece this size within commuting distance to Portland was astronomical. And Tabitha couldn't care less about its monetary value. The property value to her was all about the amount of space she could give to each animal.
Tango? How are you?
The roar of pain rippled through Stefan's mind. Tango was afraid. For Tabitha.
There was so much information rolling off the big animal yet it appeared to be emotional in nature. Stefan couldn't see if Tango actually understood what had happened. He'd know Tabitha wasn't here though. And that was enough to throw both animals out of their comfort zone
. All animals were intuitive, but beloved pets even more so.
Stefan had no idea what would happen to Tango if Tabitha didn't survive. Her father was alive but had as little to do with the place as possible. And from what Stefan understood from Tabitha, Dennis wouldn't keep it running if anything happened to her.
Tango was too old to move to another reserve. He was past his twilight years. And his energy said he was close to going. Tabitha had broken down in tears more than once over the thought of losing her feline companion.
The old tiger didn't appear to be in any actual physical pain. But then, Tabitha was a strong healer, with animals her focus. It made sense for her old friend to live so long and be so healthy if she'd dedicated a certain portion of her healing energy to that purpose.
